Midnight Synthesis I

"The Moon Is Shining in the Sky"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

One discovers music from all sorts of places.  Once upon a time we used to use the radio; nowadays it’s super-rare for me to listen to the radio at all, much less find anything new (and good) on it.¹  Then for a while I tried Internet radio (such as the inimitable Radio Paradise²) and Pandora (back when it was an actual music discovery service, before it was bought by the detestable Sirius XM).  But probably the most reliable source of new music throughout the years has been coworkers.  My employees at Barefoot Software exposed me to things as varied as Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd to Sublime.  A guy at Thinkgeek that I barely knew introduced me to Modest Mouse, and my fellow code monkey Jon Sime, who I worked hand-in-hand with for years, introduced me to Naomi and Skyedance.  And so it’s gone, for every job since.  At my current job, we have a whole Slack channel devoted to sharing music, and I’ve picked up a lot of great ideas.

And that’s how I can tell exactly when I discovered Urban Heat: March 24th, 2022.  A coworker (again, someone I didn’t really know) posted this:

Here’s a pretty fun band I discovered at SXSW last week, for those who are into an 80s synthwave vibe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTvSIt8EUuU

Now, you say “80s” and “synth” in the same sentence and my ears perk right up.  There was a lot of fantastic music in the 80s, but, as you know from my extensive talking about my 80s My Way mix, “my way” generally means heavy on the synthpop.  It’s what really attracted me to the music of the time.

We tend to think of synthpop as upbeat and ... well, poppy.  It’s right there in the name, after all.  But, speaking as someone who listened to a lot of it in the 80s, I can tell you: synthpop has a lot of layers, a lot of different modes, if you will.  And there’s a certain flavor of synthpop songs that is best suited for listening to late at night, in the dark ... at times when you’re not necessarily sad, and not necessarily contemplative, and not necessarily wistful, but perhaps all three at once, and even experiencing other shades of emotion that you can’t quite put a finger on.  When all those feelings come together, in the deep of night ... well, when that happens, you need this mix.

So, while there can be no doubt that Urban Heat was the mix-starter here, there’s also some classic 80s synthpop that I wanted to showcase as well.  And let’s kick that off with what I really feel like is the epitome of this sound: “Today” by Talk Talk.  Talk Talk is one of those bands who never achieved mega-success—their highest charting single in the UK was the third release of “It’s My Life” at #13; in the US, they managed #31 on that track’s first go round—but, in the synthpop scene, they were hugely influential.  A huge number of artists have credited them as influences, including Tears for Fears, Radiohead, Kate Bush, and members of Pearl Jam and Porcupine Tree.  They’ve been covered by No Doubt and Weezer, a tribute concert to them filled the Royal Festival Hall in London, and a documentary about them won the jury prize at Musical Ecran festival in France.  Much of their music is poppy, sure, but all of it is also a bit dark.  And I think the perfect example of this is “Today,” from their remarkable debut The Party’s Over (which was their second biggest hit in the UK, hitting #14 in 1982).  They were doing this sort of music before anyone else, as far as I know, and in many ways they did it best.

Still, let’s not discount Depeche Mode, most especially on their album which is almost entirely devoted to this flavor of synthpop, Black Celebration.  This goth-infused synthpop album is so perfect that I actually picked two tracks off of it: “But Not Tonight” provides our volume title, while “Stripped” is, as its name implies, a bit of a stripped-down track, with its synth chords providing near-minimalism, while the reverb on David Gahan’s vocals give it an almost eerie quality.  And of course this is the perfect place for one-hit-wonder Re-Flex’s iconic “The Politics of Dancing,” which is perhaps the closest thing to “upbeat” we’ll hear in this mix.  This is a shimmering, glittery darkness, sure, but dark all the same.

Closing out the 80s, I didn’t actually discover German synthpop band Camouflage till well after that decade, but they fit right in with the Depeche Mode vibe.  Their sophmore album, 1989’s Methods of Silence, contains a number of decent tracks,³ and I felt like “One Fine Day” was just perfect here.

And just because the 80s is over doesn’t mean the bands of the 80s are.  There are two major finds showcased here.  The first I tripped over when they performed on Stephen Colbert’s late night show: he’d been hosting for less than a year when he announced that New Order was going to be performing new music after 10 years of nothing (and around 20 of nothing notable, in my opinion).  I was intrigued, but not hopeful; when most bands get back together after a gap of that long, they produce “new” music that is merely a lackluster echo of their glory days.  But Music Complete is something entirely different: it’s an album that rivals Technique, and maybe even Brotherhood, in its depth and quality.  And it is, in some indefinable way, darker than their other outings—so much so that I couldn’t resist putting two tracks from it on this volume.  “Academic” is a deceptive little tune: it seems like it’s going to be all bright and happy, but then smacks you upside the head with lyrics like these:

There was a time when my world belonged with you,
But I was so misguided in my youth.
I couldn’t help but drink this poison brew;
You had a strange perception of the truth.

The buzzing guitars of “Academic” are replaced by a synth intro reminiscent of a child’s toy piano on “Restless,” where Bernard Sumner’s breathy, almost whispered vocals give the track a softness that make it perfect for late-night listening.  Overall, two tunes that fit perfectly here.

The other 80s update that you’ll find here is Alison Moyet (Alf to her friends), who was the lead singer of what I usually consider to be the most important synth band of all time (or, at worst, a close second behind Soft Cell): Yazoo.  Typically truncated to “Yaz” here in the States, I knew their hit “Situation,” but it was the random choice to buy Upstairs at Eric’s as one of my very first albums (I think it was on sale or something), almost certainly at Peaches during my freshman year of college, that really blew me away.  Nearly every song on that album is a gem, and I chose one⁴ to be our “push song” at work one day early in 2022.  And I got to thinking, I pretty much know what happened to Vince Clarke post-Yazoo,⁵ but whatever happened to Alf?  I had always had the impression that she left synthpop behind and gone on to do more of a soul-type thing (sort of Adele before there was Adele).  And, you know, she did do that for a while ... and then she stopped recording altogether for a while, due to litigation with record labels ... and then a few more albums ... and then, over 30 years after Upstairs at Eric’s, she released The Minutes.  And this record, despite being nearly 10 years old by the time I stumbled on it, is just brilliant.  It’s synthpoppy, but in a much more modern way, and some of the tracks are just perfect for this mix.  Again, I didn’t try to restrain myself: there are two selections here from The Minutes.  First, “Horizon Flame,” a track that starts out with synths doubling as strings, adds a subtle underlying drone, and gradually ramps up to an ode to “ordinary pain.” It was perfect as the second track of our opening triptych.  Meanwhile, easing into the back third of the volume, “Right as Rain” has a much stronger electronica rhythm, but keeps the drone and even amps up the dystopian lyrics:

If you can’t be happy with me,
Be unhappy with me;
Stay unhappy with me.

Both are just amazing tracks.

But of course it was the modern revival of this darker style of synthpop that was the impetus for the mix in the first place, so let’s not fail to showcase Urban Heat.  The third track in our opening triad is “Running Out of Time,” from their debut Wellness.⁶  It sort of encapsulates all of Urban Heat’s expansive sound: there are echoey vocals, that classic synthpop drum machine rhythm, and sparkly synth chords in between the verses.  It’s just gorgeous.  Then, winding down to our closer, “Stay” starts out slow but insistent, but then blossoms into an electro-guitar-fueled chorus:

Well, I guess if you want to stay,
Who am I to tell you not to feel that way?
Tell them all, they’re all better off:
Better off anyway.

If you like synthpop, you should really pick up this album.

And it’s a truism in the music industry that, if you can find one band making a certain style of music, you can find half a dozen if you look hard enough.  We should probably start with the prolific Davey Havok, ostensibly the lead singer of punk / nu-metal / emo band AFI.  I don’t actually love AFI, personally, and even if I did, their music certainly wouldn’t fit here.⁷  But he and another AFI member went on to found Blaqk Audio, who are a perfect fit for this mix.  I actually did restrain myself this time and chose only a single track, “Waiting to Be Told.” With an almost martial beat and soaring vocals, it’s a strong entry.  But it’s Havok’s other side project, Dreamcar, to whom I gave the honor of the opening track.  I first heard “Kill for Candy” also on Colbert’s show, just a year after I heard the new New Order song, and I was immediately struck by the similarity.  Dreamcar is not synthpop, but then neither is New Order: they’re both quite strongly new wave.  But “Kill for Candy,” as hooky as it is, has a really strong dark throughline that I thought made it work very nicely here.  Plus it’s just a gorgeous song, so it certainly had to go somewhere.⁸

Finally, the Black Queen is a group founded by members of Trent Reznor’s touring band for Nine Inch Nails and members of the Dillinger Escape Plan, a band I had never heard of before, which is typically described as “metalcore.” And, apparently, what you get when you combine metalcore with industrial is this flavor of dark synthwave, because their debut album (Fever Daydream) feels like someone took Urban Heat and Blaqk Audio and ran them through a mellowizing sausage grinder.  Their single “The End Where We Start” is probably more dark than poppy, but Greg Puciato’s vocals here are high and sweet and melodic, in stark contrast to his normal growly screams in the Dillinger Escape Plan.  It’s a nice lead-in to “Stay.”

Midnight Synthesis I
[ The Moon Is Shining in the Sky ]

“Kill for Candy” by Dreamcar, off Dreamcar
“Horizon Flame” by Alison Moyet, off The Minutes
“Running Out of Time” by Urban Heat, off Wellness
“But Not Tonight” by Depeche Mode, off Black Celebration
“Academic” by New Order, off Music Complete
“Remains” by Zola Jesus, off Okovi
“Oblivion” by Grimes, off Visions
“The Politics of Dancing” by Re-Flex, off The Politics of Dancing
“One Fine Day” by Camouflage, off Methods of Silence
“Today” by Talk Talk, off The Party's Over
“Judas” by Clan of Xymox, off In Love We Trust
“Waiting to Be Told” by Blaqk Audio, off Material
“Right as Rain” by Alison Moyet, off The Minutes
“Disconnected” by Emma's Mini, off Beat Generation Mad Trick
“Restless” by New Order, off Music Complete
“Stripped” by Depeche Mode, off Black Celebration
“The End Where We Start” by the Black Queen, off Fever Daydream
“Stay” by Urban Heat, off Wellness
“Trust Me” by Zola Jesus, off Stridulum

Total:  19 tracks,  82:24

I’m not sure what here is too unexpected, but I did feel like I could find some synthy goth tunes which might fit the vibe.  My first thought was Zola Jesus, who ... well, she’s hard to describe, but she has a very distinct, synthy style of goth/darkwave.  “Remains” is a track with nearly ambient vocals and a techno beat, and I thought it provided a beautiful bridge from New Order to Grimes.  Meanwhile, “Trust Me” is a slow, sober track that just made for the perfect closer.

And why not throw in some witchhouse?  Whatever you may think of Grimes—and having a child with Elon Musk definitely does call into question one’s personal choices—you can’t deny she’s got some talent behind the boards.  “Oblivion” is my all-time favorite Grimes track,⁹ and it slots in perfectly alongside Zola Jesus as the end of the first third.

The middle stretch of the volume is a strong dose of that 80s goodness: Re-Flex, then Camouflage, then Talk Talk.  And then I needed something to bridge the 34-year gap between “Today” and “Waiting to Be Told,” so I thought of Clan of Xymox.  Xymox was of course a great, synthy (if not quite synthpop) band from the 90s.  Clan of Xymox, though, has a much stronger goth character, despite both incarnations being mostly just extensions of Dutch genius Ronny Moorings, plus it’s still going strong to the present day.  I thought “Judas” was pretty solid here: it’s certainly got the dark in spades, and it’s got some great synth work as well.

And perhaps the only truly unexpected tune here is from emma’s mini, who I introduced you to back in Smokelit Flashback VI.  In general, emma’s mini is less synthpop and more electropop, which is certainly similar, but definitely not the same.  Most of their album Beat Generation Mad Trick is pretty upbeat, but “Disconnected” has a different cast.  It has the same soft echoey vocals that many of the tracks here, and, while the chorus is nearly as upbeat as “The Politics of Dancing” (though the tune as a whole doesn’t come close), the lyrics (e.g. “I fell down”) have a darker tinge.  I thought it worked very well here.

Next time, we’ll ride the rails.

__________

1 For an exception, please refer to the not-so-long-ago story of my discovery of the only Taylor Swift song I’ve really liked (so far).

2 Which is, somewhat surprisingly to me, still going strong after a mind-boggling 24 years on the Internet.  That’s longer than Facebook, and almost as long as Google and Amazon.  Few things on the Internet achieve that kind of longevity.

3 One of which is a short bridge I used on Phantasma Chorale II.

4 Specifically, “Don’t Go.”

5 Specifically, he went on to form Erasure with Andy Bell.

6 Wellness started out as an EP, but has since been expanded to a full album.  See the Bandcamp link in the tracklist.

7 Perhaps it might find a home on the Thrashomatic Danger Mix.

8 Before this mix existed, it was slated for Totally Different Head.

9 Though, honestly, that’s perhaps not saying much: I’m not a huge Grimes fan.

First of the season

Today I finally got the pool warm enough to swim in.  It was not warm, mind you: just warm enough.  So my youngest and I spent nearly an hour in the pool, shivering and playing ball.  (Well, okay, the last bit was spent in the jacuzzi, warming up and playing 20 Questions.  But you know what I mean.)  This is perhaps the latest in the year we’ve waited since we moved in here, but the weather this year has been pretty abysmal.  I’ve complained a bit about the rain, which has been pretty miserable, but of course the rain has affected the temperature as well.  Normally I can’t get through March without being tempted to crank up the pool heater.  But this year it’s been getting cold at night pretty much every night until just this week.  So there wasn’t much point till now.

So, climate change is screwing us, but we’re gonna go down fighting.  We’re paying for a pool, and, dammit, we’re going to swim in it.  Weather be damned.

The Saga of a HELOC

Last year I decided that it was finally time to fix some of the big stuff around the house: the garage roof was leaking, the swimming pool needed retiling, and we’d been operating with no air conditioning upstairs for nearly ten years, and the Smaller Animal—that’s the one with the heart condition, who’s not nearly so “smaller” any more—is prone to overheating.  Of course, things like that require quite a bit of money, but the good news was that we’d been paying off our mortgage for 13 years, so we’d reached the point where the mortgage insurance had dropped off, plus the value of our house was shooting up.  And my credit score had bounced back from all those youthful credit card indiscretions.  All in all, a good time to leverage our equity and get some cash for repairs.

We looked first at refinancing, but we didn’t relish the process and paperwork for getting a whole new mortgage.  I looked at the whole second mortgage thing, but then I found something even better: a HELOC.  That’s a home equity line of credit: meaning, you only borrow the money when you actually need it to pay for something, the equity of the house serves as the collateral, and most are interest-only for the first 10 years or so, then you start paying it off.  In 10 years, we’ll be nearly done paying off the primary mortgage, so it’ll be less onerous to take on another payment.  And, if we get a windfall, we can always pay off the HELOC early.  It’s a pretty good deal, and many financial sites out there recommend it as the way to go.

So I started looking into banks that offered such a thing, and I found a credit union that I liked.  Now, this story is about how the universe hates me, not about how I chose a terrible bank, so I’m not going to name the exact institution.  Besides, as much as this bank fucked up, a lot of it wasn’t their fault, and they also had a number of very helpful employees along the way, so I’m not going to throw them under the bus.  I’ll just say that it happens to be a credit union based in New Jersey.  Which, in this day and age of doing everything online, I figured wouldn’t matter that much.

But of course people in New Jersey tend to work New Jersey hours, and I don’t even work “regular” hours here in sunny Southern California.  I often work late into the night, so I get up late.  My work is fine with that, and if I need to take a break to handle something that simply has to happen during business hours, they’re very understanding.  And, for West Coast businesses, my roughly 4 hours of overlap with what’s considered a normal workday is plenty.

But of course New Jersy is 3 hours behind us, so that 4 hours becomes about an hour, and it’s the first hour of my day, when I’m still waking up and feeling a bit groggy and out-of-sorts.  So it’s not ideal.  But, I figured, as long as I can handle the majority of it via email, I should be good.

And my initial contact, who was the lending equivalent of a salesperson, seemed to get that.  Oh, she kept sending me messages like “when’s a good time to call?” and so forth, but I just ignored that and kept on asking my questions and asking for info via email.  It took me several months to make up my mind, because that’s just the sort of person I am (i.e. I have to analyze every possible choice from every possible angle), but she was patient and never told me to fuck off, and eventually my CFP took a look at the rates and the conditions and said, wow, that’s a pretty good rate, you should jump on that.  So I did.

Now, as it happened, this was right around the holidays at the end of last year.  I returned my completed application on 12/12/23, and was transitioned to a loan processor on 12/21.  By the time Jaunary 2nd rolled around, I was getting emails from a different processor because the first guy had gone on vacation.  On 1/5, I got an email from a third processor, but the very next day the second guy was back.  And of course the first guy eventually came back (that was on 1/16) and tried to take back over, but there was already a good deal of confusion by that point.

See, one of the conditions for the loan was that I had to open a savings account with the bank, with a minimum initial deposit of $5.  And I would get a better rate if I had payments automatically deducted from that account.  Which seemed simple enough: just open an online account.  I’ve done it many times, at many different banks.  Piece of cake, I thought.  Except it wasn’t.

My first attempt failed.  My second attempt failed.  The crew of rotating loan processors advised me to go online and set up a video appointment with the technical support department ... which also failed.  I ended up making 8 attempts on 5 different browsers on 3 different operating systems on 4 different devices (including laptops, desktops, and phones) before I was finally able to get through the account opening process.  I never was able to successfully schedule a tech support appointment, and none of the “advice” from the processors ever worked: it was just trying over and over again until something finally clicked.  All I got from the processors were repeated instructions to do the same things I was already doing that weren’t working, and stern admonitions like this one:

PLEASE NOTE:
Opening a membership account is a member requirement on this process.

To which I responded, yeah, I know that.  That’s what I’m trying to do.  And what eventually worked was Microsoft Edge on a Windows machine, which is ... just, no.  There’s no way I was going to borrow The Mother‘s laptop and use Edge every time I had to do anything with the bank.  At this point, my whole impression of the bank’s technical capabilities was plummeting.  But I had two bigger problems.

First of all, the loan processor was threatening to close my application, because it’s only good for a certain number of days.  I kept pointing out to him that none of the problems I was having were my fault, so it was kind of on them to extend the loan.  Which didn’t fly.  So I had to CC my salesperson and get her to step in, which she did and the deadline was extended.

But the biggest problem was, they wouldn’t open the account without putting in the $5.  Which is fairly unusual: the normal way online banks do it is, you open the account, then you have 30 days (or whatever) to make the initial deposit, or it just gets closed automatically.  But this wouldn’t even let me finish the account opening process without the 5 bucks.  Fine, I said; how do I add that?  There was exactly one option: I had to go through a bunch of hoops, give them all the same info I’d already given in the loan application, including yet another picture of my driver’s license, and then I had to send them a selfie (WTF??), and then I just needed to enter the login and password for my main bank account.

And that’s where I shut it down.  I’m not giving out my frigging password to my primary bank account.  I just met you! no way I trust you enough to give you the most sensitive password I own (and especially not over Edge ... sheesh).  So I emailed them back and said, nunh-unh, try again.  So my salesperson stepped in (again) and got the something-something department to open the account manually, waiving the $5 minimum, so then I had routing and account numbers to add to my main bank, so I could transfer the $5 that way.

As you probably know, the way these online accounts verify each other is to make little deposits called “trial deposits”: there’s two or three of them, they’re less than a dollar each, and then they withdraw them back at the end.  You verify the bank by entering the amount of the trial depsoits, which proves you have access to the target bank account.  And, now that the account was officially open, I could use the credit union’s mobile app, so I did have access to the target account.  So may main bank did the trial deposits, but, when I went to verify them, they had cancelled the account.  So I had to call them, and they said the transfers were rejected from the credit union side.  So I passed that along, at which point my salesperson proved to be the hero yet again: she instructed the loan processor to mark the application complete (despite the fact that my account was in a bit of a limbo state, not having received the minimum intial deposit), then she tried to call me to explain what I needed to do, which of course took a few days before we could connect, and in the meantime I started receiving insistent emails from a closing agent.  And I understand that she was just trying to do her job and close things out in a timely manner, but at that point I still didn’t understand how I was going to get a measly $5 into this new account, much less how I was going to be able to get a regular monthly payment into it, so I wasn’t quite ready to sign a bunch of leagl docs yet.  We’re up to February by this point.

Over the phone, my salesperson told me that the reason the trial deposits were rejected was because they weren’t the minimum $5 initial deposit.  I’m not sure this entirely made sense, since I could see the trial deposits in the phone app, so it seemed like they weren’t really rejected, but whatever.  My salesperson advised me to write myself a paper check for the $5 and use the mobile app to deposit it.  Which seemed a bit ... circuitous, but I just wanted to get the whole thing wrapped up, so I just did that.  And my loan closed on 2/22.  Now, this particular HELOC had a condition that I needed to pull out at least $25,000 on closing (that’s what they call the “initial draw”), and that I had to not pay any of that back for the first year.  This was another discount to my interest rate, and my CFP approved it, and I needed nearly that much to cover the upstairs A/C and the garage roof, which were the two things we planned to do immediately anyway.  So that was fine, and the initial $25k was deposited to my fresh, new credit union account on 2/27.  Story over, right?

Nope.

Because I didn’t realize that “do you want us to FedEx you a check or just deposit the initial draw into your savings account?” was a trick question.  In hindsight, if I’d only taken the check ...  But I thought to myself that the online banking troubles were surely over by now, and it would be easy to get the money moved electronically from the credit union back to my main bank, or in the worst case to my other online bank (I use that one because it has a higher interest rate on savings).  How young and foolish I was then.

First I set up both my main bank and my high-interest account bank as targets for transfers in the credit union.  This worked perfectly ... except that, apparently, while doing electronic transfers into the credit union account was fine, doing transfers out of it was not possible.  Like, it just wouldn’t show the external accounts as an option to tranfer to, only to transfer from.  So I figured I’d just add the credit union as an account for tranfser in my high-interest account.  Which also worked perfectly, except for the fact that they have a $2,000/day limit, and a $10,000/month limit.  Shit.  At this point the HVAC repariman and the roofer were botgh scheduled, so I started transferring $2k per day, and then set about trying to figure out how to get to the rest.

I tried to set up the credit union account again at my main bank.  It was rejected before I even got past the first page.  I called them; they told me that the credit union account didn’t allow ACH transfers (which I pointed out was patently false, due to the several currently ongoing transfers to the high-interest account), and then they told me that I’d have to talk to their external accounts department (who of course had gone for the day), and then eventually they told me that I had to stop asking them about it or else my account might get flagged for fraud.  (Personally, I’m convinced that they’re just pissed off that they never got their 67¢ from the trial deposits back.  I offered to cover it for them, but they didn’t buy it.)

So I called the credit union (during my one hour overlap) who suggested that I use “shared branching.” This is a system whereby credit unions all over the country have reciprocal arrangement where you can go to a credit union near you, even though it’s not the same institution, and use it as a branch.  Excellent.  There’s exactly one shared branch in my city, so I went there, only to discover that they had a $1k/day limit.  Well, $1k/day in cash and $1k/day in check form.  So they advised me to try another shared branch, which was an entirely different credit union, but it was 20 minutes away.  I figured, while I’m here, just give me a check for a thousand and a thousand in cash.  I didn’t really want the cash, of course—who wants be carrying around a thousand dollars in cash these days?—but I really wanted to make sure the HVAC guy (who was coming first) would be covered.  But the check they printed for me didn’t have my name correct, because I’m a “Jr,” which is the bane of my existence, and apparently my name was not correct on the credit union account, and the check was automatically printed out based on my account name, so it was made out to my dad.  I pointed out that my main bank was super-picky about the name being correct on checks deposited via the mobile app, so they’d need to cancel it and write a new one.  Except they couldn’t cancel it, because it was a cashier’s check or a certified check or whatever, so they had to redeposit it.  And then they couldn’t write another check because they could only do $1k per day in check form, and they’d already done that.  So now I was up to only 11 thousand, out of the original 25.

So I called the shared branch in the next town over to verify that they would not have any limits; they confimed that, while there was a daily limit on cash, there was no limit on the amount they could give me a check for.  Excellent.  So I drove there.  And their machines were down.  So I had to come back on a different day, which I did.  And they said my account had been flagged for fraud and I had to call the original credit union.  So I did (during my one hour overlap), and they said they’d have to talk to the fraud department, who of course had gone for the day.  So I waited for them to call back and tell me that the fraud hold was lifted, which took a few days, and then I drove to the 20-minutes-away shared branch for a third time, and they told me that the account had been flagged for fraud again.  They theorized that trying to get a single check for roughly $14k was just automatically triggering some fraud threshhold and suggested that I call the source bank.  They’re in New Jersey, I pointed out.  Oh, well, then, they’ll be closed now, they responded.  Yes, I know, I said.

So I called the HELOC credit union again—and, let me tell you, even the most understanding workplace in the world was starting to look askance at me by this point when I said I had some business to attend to, yet again—and asked how I could get my hands on this frigging money that they’d so generously lent me but were making it very hard to get at it even though I was already paying interest on it.  They could do a wire transfer, they suggested, but that would cost money.  Hell, no, I said (honestly, a wire transfer is cheap enough that it probably would have been worth it just to end the torture, but it was starting to be the principle of the thing).  They could mail me a check, they suggested: it’ll only take 7 – 10 business days.  Hey, what about that FedEx option? I asked.  Can’t I still get that?  Well, they said, they could request special dispensation to get the check expedited, but no guarantees.  Fine; I’ll take it (what choice do I have at this point?).  And it was expedited, and it arrived promptly, and I depoisted a check for nearly $14k to my main account on 4/4.  That’s about 38 days post-closing, and countless hours of my time.  Just to actually receive the money I’d already paid a month’s interest on.

We had to postpone the roofer.  But the HVAC fellow came in and did a great job, and luckily he was happy to take that $1,000 in cash off my hands.  And hopefully the roofer will be able to come in a week or so.  And then we can start looking for a pool renovater.  And maybe someone to install an on-demand hot water heater.

So that’s the whole story.  I’m sure you felt like it was a lot to read, but imagine how I feel: I had to live it.  The Mother says I obviously racked up some karmic debt, and whatever I did must’ve been pretty bad, and, who knows? maybe she’s right.  I’d like to think I’m just so lucky in life in general that the universe likes to make sure I don’t get too comfortable.  After all, complaining about how hard it was to get 25 thousand dollars so I could (in part) retile my southern California swimming pool is sort of the definition of “first-world problem.” Still, I thought you might enjoy this comedy of errors, so at least, perhaps, my misery has brought you some joy.  Enjoy the schadenfreude.

I'm drownin' ovah hyeah ...

Today I’ve spent all day recovering from my water pillow springing what might be generously described as “a leak.” So I’ve had to disassemble the whole bed, wash everything that’s washable, bin everything that’s hopeless, and drag the mattress out to sit in the sun.  After dealing with that all day, I’ve got nothing left in me to devote to a blog post.  Hopefully next week.